By Da Zhigang
Following the erroneous remarks made by Japan's Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi regarding China, the Takaichi administration has not withdrawn its false claims nor reflected on its wrongdoing, but has instead continued to provoke China. Japan's Defense Minister Shinjiro Koizumi on December 7 hyped up the so-called "radar illumination" issue, deliberately fabricating and spreading false information related to military security. Such acts reveal the attempt by the Takaichi administration to artificially "draw a target," portraying itself as the so-called victim in regional frictions. The intention is to divert international attention from its erroneous statements and militaristic behavior, and to create excuses for dangerous moves aimed at hollowing out the pacifist constitution and breaking through existing constraints.
The fabrication of a victim narrative has long been an important tool used by Japan's right-wing forces to advance historical revisionism, and is now increasingly serving as a key discourse framework underpinning the Takaichi administration's foreign and security policy. The victim narrative refers to a post-war narrative architecture, orchestrated by official institutions and reinforced across multiple sectors, intended to evade Japan's responsibility for its war of aggression. By manufacturing emotionally tragic images, removing contextual background, and shifting responsibility, it seeks to reshape Japan's national identity, shake off the constraints of a defeated state, and provide public opinion basis for military expansion and constitutional revision. At the core of this narrative is the deliberate emphasis on Japan's singular identity as a victim of nuclear bombing, while amplifying Japan's wartime suffering, obscuring the nature of the war, and denying historical facts such as the Nanjing Massacre and atrocities committed against many countries in Asia. By stripping itself of the perpetrator identity, Japan attempts to reshape itself as the "victim" of the war.
The primary objectives of the victim narrative are threefold. First, it seeks to amplify Japan's self-portrayal as a victim while downplaying the moral burden associated with being an aggressor. Through disseminating narratives of self-defense and victimhood in commemorative events and public discourse, it deliberately blurs the causal sequence in which acts of aggression preceded and resulted in retaliation. By obscuring responsibility for wartime actions, it projects a revised historical narrative to the international community. Second, it aims to construct the image of Japan as a peace-oriented nation by highlighting its postwar economic rise and its contributions as a peaceful country. Through doing so, it seeks to weaken international vigilance against the resurgence of Japanese militarism. Third, it seeks to create an international atmosphere in which Japan is portrayed as being in an "inferior" position, thereby laying a discursive foundation for multilateral checks on neighboring countries. Meanwhile, by leveraging a tragic or victimhood image to solicit international sympathy, it aims to pave the way for coordinating with extra-regional powers to intervene in regional affairs and constrain surrounding countries.
Since taking office, Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi has not only continued the historically oriented "victim narrative," but has also attempted to replicate this approach in real-world actions targeting neighboring countries, laying bare her strategic ambitions and calculations. The misleading signals released through such moves are already producing increasingly serious consequences. Right-wing forces in Japan are attempting to use this deliberately ambiguous narrative to erode international vigilance toward Japan, and to employ strategic ambiguity as a means of evading responsibility for its wartime crimes. The cultivation of a victim mentality also serves to build the public-opinion foundation for Japan to break through the exclusively defense-oriented policy and move toward becoming a state capable of waging war, thereby reinforcing the so-called legitimacy of involvement in armed conflict.
Takaichi and her ilk are using the "victim narrative" as a façade while pursuing an agenda of confrontation in practice, and this approach has already produced, and will continue to produce, a series of harmful consequences. First, it distorts public understanding of history. A survey conducted this year by the Nippon Housou Kyoukai (NHK) showed that only 35 percent of respondents in Japan acknowledge the fact of Japan's war of aggression. This indicates that the "victim narrative" has deeply penetrated Japanese society. The younger groups supporting Takaichi's remarks in particular risk becoming fertile ground for the resurgence of militarism. Second, it undermines regional cooperation. Japan has repeatedly tested the bottom lines of neighboring countries and the international community under the guise of the "victim narrative," and on this basis has even engaged in provocations against China. Such actions are likely to trigger acute security anxiety among surrounding countries, thus disrupting peace, stability, and cooperative processes in East Asia. Third, it poses hidden dangers to the postwar international order. The "victim narrative" implicitly denies the legal validity and authority of key documents that defined the postwar order, including the Cairo Declaration and the Potsdam Proclamation, thereby posing risks that undermine peace and stability both in the region and around the globe.
No matter what goals the Takaichi Cabinet seeks to achieve through its victim narrative, it cannot alter the reality that Sanae Takaichi and the right-wing forces behind her are still misjudging the situation, refusing to repent, and attempting to incite confrontation in order to break through the post-war order and revive Japan's militarist legacy. The more Japan seeks to portray itself as a victim, the more clearly it reveals its identity as a historical perpetrator; and the political schemes embedded in this narrative will ultimately confirm Japan as a potential destabilizer of peace in East Asia. What the Takaichi Cabinet needs most at this moment is genuine reflection and correction, withdraw false assertions and refrain from proceeding further down a misguided path.
(The author is a research fellow of the Institute of Northeast Asian Studies at Heilongjiang Provincial Academy of Social Sciences.)
Editor's note: Originally published on huanqiu.com, this article is translated from Chinese into English and edited by the China Military Online. The information and opinions in this article do not necessarily reflect the views of eng.chinamil.com.cn.